Goals of the BizTalk Framework -- Part 1

Difficulties of Business Integration More and more organizations embrace business-to-business and business-to-consumer commerce models using the Internet. Most of those organizations must deal with two difficult and costly issues. The first is application integration within an organization, and the second is business integration across multiple organizations. Many companies still use independent systems for inventory management, sales tracking, employee information, and so on. Each of these systems has its own data representation, which is not interpreted easily by other systems. This makes it difficult for such businesses to exchange data between departments within the organization. In addition, the platforms that these systems run on are not readily compatible with one another, so significant resources in terms of development and hardware are needed to allow these systems and applications to communicate. This situation can be compared to a conference at which every participant speaks a different language. Each participant can talk, and each is intelligent and has a good understanding of his or her particular specialty. But because the delegates don't know one another's languages, they can't communicate. Business applications are like the conference delegates: they contain business logic and are able to communicate with the outside world using their own data formats, but trying to get them to communicate with one another is just about impossible. If you think this situation is difficult to manage, think about what happens when two or more such organizations attempt to do business together-the number of applications and platforms grows exponentially with each added system. To further complicate matters, electronic commerce is growing rapidly and the pace of this growth is accelerating. Therefore, many organizations see the need to integrate not only their own independent systems but also those of trading partners. The use of the Internet to automate supply chains, forecasting systems, and other systems will continue to expand. While creating a Web application and deploying it is relatively easy, integrating such an application company-wide with your existing systems is not. Many companies already find it difficult and costly to integrate systems within their own organizations. The requirements of integration heavily strain the capabilities of companies large and small. Meeting these requirements is the second tough issue many organizations face. Like the conference delegates, all those systems and applications need to exchange data, creating the need for a "universal translator." Attempts at Solving the Integration Problems The integration problems outlined in the previous section are not new. Fortunately, solutions exist to help you address these problems. In fact, the BizTalk Framework represents the third generation of solutions. Later in this chapter, some earlier approaches are examined as to why they were insufficient. But first, the following sections take a closer look at the computing requirements of business organizations. Business Requirements Obviously, different businesses have different specific requirements, but in terms of data and business process integration, their goals are surprisingly similar. The following are the five most common business requirements. Embrace global marketplace. Businesses need to be accessible from anywhere, at any time. This requirement is fairly obvious, considering that customers are spread out in various time zones all over the globe. Many customers also travel, and the goal is to give them the same experience regardless of where they are at the moment. Ideally, this includes having the same interface and, preferably, the same response time. Reduce process time. Time is money, so the faster you can serve one customer, the sooner you can serve the next one. Make better decisions faster. As consumers become more sophisticated and more informed, businesses need to concentrate on presenting the right information to the right people in the right format. This includes having the information available when it is needed and the ability to manipulate this information. Manage and share knowledge effectively. This goal includes developing and deploying solutions more quickly. Manage dynamic business relationships. As the speed and ease of doing business grows, the expectations of customers and partners grow as well. It is therefore essential that businesses adapt quickly to meet those expectations, or risk losing their customers to a competitor. All these requirements are very different, but all have one thing in common: none can be met without dealing with integration issues. Platform Transition Risks With the speed of doing business accelerating, companies must meet the above five requirements quickly and cost-effectively because doing so makes good business sense. But, even more important than improving the bottom line, businesses need to minimize the risks involved in the transition to a new platform. In fact, businesses will pay more for an integration solution if they can minimize the risk involved. Specifically, they must manage the following kinds of risk: Technical. The solution must work correctly. No business manager will consider an integration solution without a high degree of confidence that the solution will do what it promises to do. In other words, businesses want solutions that work. Operational. The solution must fit the business. The solution might work in general, but each business is different. Therefore, businesses demand that the solution be able to meet specific business requirements, including processing the transaction volumes, business characteristics, and transaction loads specific to that particular business. And, of course, the ideal solution will allow the business to grow. As the transaction volumes increase and the number of business partners grows, the solution should accommodate these changes gracefully. Financial. The solution must fit the budget. If the solution meets the two requirements above, but is too expensive for the business to adopt, it will not be adopted. Therefore, the solution must be cost-effective. Political. The solution must be acceptable to the key people in the organization. This is an often-neglected aspect, but it is vital that it be considered. After all, a solution may meet all the previous three requirements, but if you can't sell it to the board of directors, the solution will never be adopted. (Because the political risk is outside the scope of this book, it will not be discussed in more detail.) Any effective integration solution must take into account the above risks. As mentioned earlier, there have been many attempts to resolve the integration issues. The next section describes these attempts in light of the business requirements and risks examined in this section. Labels:asp.net, c#.net, Dot NET, DOT NET NUKE, html, java script, Share Point, SOAP, vb.net